Children Of Dune Revisted
by Morwen Tindomerel
Summary: A decidedly AU rewrite of COD. Yes, I've got a nerve, with three OCs - so far.
1. A Very Brief Prologue

All careful readers - and one must read Dune carefully or be hopelessly lost - must have noticed the discontinuities between the two earlier books and Children of Dune, ranging from minor details like the color of mourning (not yellow - GREEN) to large ones like Alia's sudden ability to access both male and female memories and a sharp reduction in her prescient abilities. And then there's the whole 'Golden Path' business.

Frank, please explain to me how a few thousand years of tyrannically imposed stasis are necessary to further the end of reintroducing randomness to the universe?

So here is a totally AU version of COD that follows up the hint in Dune Messiah that Alia will bear a preborn child - or rather children.


	2. Birthday

It was a few days before the eighth anniversary of my birth - which I share not only with my twin but with our two cousins, also twins, born exactly a year before us. Clothing, rugs and hangings had been packed under Harah's watchful eye, Stilgar had told off an escort of his best men and Father had come with ornithopters to fly us all to Arrakeen for the usual ceremonies.

"I hate this city," said Ghanima.

"Can one hate stone and steel?" Paul piped, mocking stresses dancing through the words. I turned my head, not raising it from the supporting rest, to look at my brother. He was sitting forward, as far as the restraint harness would let him, bright eyes fixed on Ghani, who he could just see from his angle.

"No." she answered. "But one can hate the tau, the sprit of a place."

"Tau?" Paul rolled the word meditatively in his mouth. "Tau; oneness. Unity. Does Arrakeen have tau?"

"No," that was Leto, who I could glimpse across the aisle and one row ahead next to his sister. "It is that very lack of tau that Ghani and I find distasteful."

"Is it possible for so many millions to be as one?" Paul challenged.

"They may be united by a single faith," Leto countered.

"Or divided by it?" Paul asked, raising his brows.

"Divisions do not undo unities created by common assumptions," answered Leto.

Ghani laughed in soft appreciation. I looked over her seat at my father's long back in the pilot's position wondering how long he would suffer the boys' challenge-game to continue.

"But are they truly shared assumptions or do they only seem to be shared?" asked Paul.

"Seem," Leto conceded. "That is why there is no tau in Arakeen though all seem to worship Mua'dib."

"Say rather all pay homage to his Church," countered my brother. "Submission to power is not true belief."

"True belief requires knowledge," said Leto.

"Those who know Mua'dib do not speak. Those who know him not babble continuously," said my brother.

"I've noticed," said Leto dryly.

"Enough!" Father growled without turning.

"Does heresy remain heresy even when spoken by Holy Ones?" Leto wondered.

"I said enough!" Father snapped. and my cousin fell reluctantly silent. The only sound was the whirr of the 'thopter wings as they counter beat to slow our speed ending abruptly as they froze into an airfoil and we swung into a long, slow downward spiral. I returned my attention to the viewport at my right shoulder.

Holy Ones. I grimaced. Did pre-born awareness stretching back through the depths of time even to the dawn of man's mind make one holy? Did the power to step outside of time and to see infinity spread out before you like a map make one a god? The Qizarate said yes and those masses below and those like them throughout the Imperium agreed. Or pretended to.

I doubted. I, Mariam Saint and Princess, Daughter of the Holy Regent Alia and her Blessed Consort the Twice Born Duncan Idaho. And my doubts were shared; by Saint and Prince Paul Idaho-Atreides my brother; and by the Imperial Heirs, their Sacred Majesties Leto II and Ghanima, carriers of the Holy Consciousness of Mua'dib.

And because I was also Alia my mother as much as I was Mariam I knew what she thought of our state. Freak. Unnatural creation of the poison Melange acting on eons of genetic meddling and mind twisting training by the Bene Gesserit Witches.

It seemed to me if the Qizarate's view was too sanguine Mother's was too harsh. Could we not simply be Human Beings, strange as our strengths and weaknesses were? That we had power was undeniable. As for the use we should make of it...that was unsettled - and unsettling.

The diamond shaped palace-keep of Mua'dib spread itself out below us, a city within a city, a jumble of domes and towers and hanging gardens. Mother's temple thrust outward from its western wall. A soaring structure, deliberate gigantic imitation of the fanes of a thousand religions. I saw the domes of Justinian's great Church; the pointed towers of ancient Chartres; fretted stone carvings, dizzying in their complexity, like those of Angor Wat; and the glistening arabesques of mosaics drawn from the Great Mosques of the ancestral faith.

No thought that ever stirred the mind of man, no work of his hand, no dream or hope is ever lost. That is the lesson of Genetic Memory. Nothing is lost, it but lies latent ready to be reawakened. Progress is an illusion, time circles it does not proceed. Yet the circles expand or shrink and ancient themes recombine forming new patterns. There is growth. Yes, there is growth.

Or there should be.

The landing pad was atop a terrace the size of a massif. Sheer plasmeld walls loomed like cliffs overlaid with brilliantly glazed tiles in an alternating pattern of palm trees and lions. The entrance plaza was black with a crowd so dense one could have walked upon the heads. High walls hid us from their view as we landed. The 'thopter door opened and the smell of Arrakeen surged inside; dust and spice mingled with a distant hint of flower essences from the palace's thousand gardens. Father hopped out, then lifted us down one by one as our escort landed and deplaned around us.

Leto and Ghanima stood straightening their robes of imperial gold and green, the movements of each uncannily mirrored by the other reflecting their terrifying oneness.

They seemed identical to the untrained eye in their formal regalia; childish faces rounded by baby fat with the wide set eyes and full, generous lips of Jessica our grandmother and the red hair of Chani their mother. But, looking forward through time, I saw that this likeness would not outlast puberty.

Leto's child-face flowed into a man's with the high cheekbones, jutting chin and arched, bladelike nose of the Atreides, a red haired reflection of his father, my Uncle Paul, and our grandfather, his namesake Leto I. Ghanima grew into an image of her mother, Aunt Chani, with a face broad at the brow and pointed at the chin, a short and tip tilted nose, but with gene traces of Grandmother Jessica still visible in the setting of her eyes and shape of her mouth.

I looked at my brother: Paul and I share a different kind of closeness, that of compliments rather then identical matches and this is reflected in our looks. Paul is as dark as I am fair with our father's curly black hair and copper-brown skin. Father's broad cheekbones gave my brother's face the same flat look and jaw and chin were still child-soft. But his button of a nose would be an Atreidian beak someday combining with deep set eyes to give him the hawk-look characteristic of our royal ancestry. Today my brother was dressed in a miniature of our father's black and green Atreides uniform with the red hawk over his heart and a darkling burnoose cloak flowing loosely from his shoulders as he moved briskly to his usual place at Leto's right.

I belonged next to Ghanima, both of us pre-born Bene Gesserits, Reverend Mothers in utero, with all the knowledge and power of the Order latent in genes and memory along with that of the Freman Sayyadina tradition. To underline this I wore the black aba of the Sisterhood but embroidered in gold with the glimmering fish symbol of the Atreides-Fremen Imperium over my stillsuit. In my inward eye I added myself to our indivisible foursome; dark blond hair glistening with coppery lights in the hot white sun, a sprinkle of freckles across a small nose, eyes with my father's epicanthic fold long and slanting beneath winged brows.

Mother emerged from a door trailing her usual entourage of priests and Amazon guards. I didn't bother to listen to the unctuous ritual words of welcome instead I looked at my mother. Alia Atreides was tall, her slimness gone to wirery strength, her bronze colored hair drawn back and ringed with golden water counters to set off the slightly hollowed cheeks and squared jawline of her oval face. This, I knew, was how I would look when I was grown, Grandmother Jessica's coloring and generous mouth but a longer nose with a hint of an Atreidian arch. I looked at my mother and was perturbed. She was closed against me! For the first time in my life I could not see out of her eyes, think her thoughts. She had closed herself! Why? I shot a quick glance behind Leto and Ghanima at my brother Paul. His eyes were narrowed with the same realization. Something was very wrong!

No time to find out what. The speeches ended and a procession formed; Leto and Ghani in the lead, Mother following, Paul and I behind her and finally our father, all enclosed by a double ring of Fremen seitch guards and Mother's Amazons, The sychophants of the Qizarate trailed behind. Why did Mother tolerate the creatures? I wondered, as always. And why in the name of the Great Worm had our uncle, the Prophet, created them?

We passed through a tiled guardroom, a rooftop garden, a pillared hall. From the harsh sunlight of Arrakis to the yellow illumination of glowglobes reflecting off polished marble and bronze. Sand etched doors were flung open before us and we entered a large, square room richly decorated with the water-planet motifs that dominate the palace. The jadeite walls were delicately carved with tinted reliefs of reed and flower, bird and dragonfly. A floor of blue glass glittered with gold and silver fish and in the center of the room water played in a fountain of fluted stone. To our right a great window gaped, lattices folded back, a low bench set beneath it.

Leto and Ghanima stepped up to look over the broad sill at the plaza below. A hundred thousand voices roared as they appeared. Paul and I mounted in our turn, one to each side of the royal twins. Below was a sea of faces, mouths working as they chanted our names. Paul and I, fruit of the Womb of Heaven, are only a little less holy then the Heirs of Muad'Dib, and only a little less royal. From infancy we have shared such moments with them. It is intended that we always shall, but we haven't quite made up our minds on that point.

Leto and Ghanima raised their hands in perfect unison, blessing the crowd and the sound cut off like a knife. A heartbeat later Paul and I made the same gesture. There was a rustle as the vast crowd knelt, rippling like a dune in the wind as they knocked their heads against stones made sacred by the tread of the Umma Emperor and his Holy Regent.

Paul spoke: "Muad'Dib gave Himself to Al-lat. Gave Himself to the Worm."

"He went into the desert, blind and alone," I responded.

"None sought for Him," said Paul.

"But all may find Him," I said.

"I am Muad'Dib!" said Leto in his father's voice.

"I am Muad'Dib!" said Ghanima, also in His voice.

"I die, yet I live."

"I am Son and Daughter."

"The Taker who cannot take without giving."

"The Giver who cannot give without taking."

Both of them together: "I am the fulcrum of contradiction!"

"Hear the mystery of Muad'Dib," said Paul.

"We hear, we hear," a hundred thousand voices moaned.

"Bi-la Kaifa," I said. 'Nothing further need be explained.'

We stepped back from the window and the roaring started up again, muffled as the plasmeld lattices were pulled shut.

"Well that's over!" Leto said brightly.

I dabbed at my eyes. Ghani touched my arm gently. "It's just priestcraft, Mari," she said, careless of the listening Quizara.

"And yet it is Truth," I said, sniffing. I remember Uncle Paul. He was indeed a mystery, a divine contradiction in the shape of a man. I shivered at memories not my own.

"Strange are the uses of Truth," said Leto dryly.

"And even stranger are its misuses," said Paul.

Mother clapped her hands sharply. "Enough. You've done well. Now rest, we still have the evening service to get through."

Leto looked up at her. "Are you quite well, Aunt?"

"Of course I'm well," she snapped. "why shouldn't I be?"

"I don't know, that's why I asked," he answered.

"You seem - different," Paul added.

"Nonsense!" she reined herself in visibly, too visibly. Where was her control? "We haven't seen much of each other lately that's all. I'm sorry. It hasn't been by my choice."

"You mustn't overwork yourself, Mother," I said.

She snorted. "Stop talking like your father!"

"Did I say a word?" Father demanded.

She laughed and suddenly looked altogether like Mother again. "Go get some rest!"


	3. Councils

Yesterday had been given over to religion. Today it was politics. The walls of the imperial council chamber were covered with sheets of highly polished gold reflecting multiple distorted images of the nine people gathered around the gigantic chrysoberyl table. Mother sat at its foot, facing towards the doors to the balcony of appearances. She wore the full vestments of a high priestess of the Faith; orange and cinnamon robes encrusted with gold, a turban of the same materials covering her hair with a gold gauze veil dangling from one corner. It seemed to me an uncharacteristic choice. And her fingers played restlessly with a stylus, a mannerism I had never seen in her before.

Stilgar, the Minister of State, sat at her right hand. His leathery face had been blasted by the endless sands and seamed by the unforgiving sun and his blue-in-blue eyes looked black, deep set under his massive brow. At Mother's other hand was the newly appointed representative of the Qizarate, Javid, a young man of repellant good looks, surly and water fat. I looked from him to Stilgar; from the Fremen past to its future and was dismayed. What have we done to our people?

I looked at my father next to Stilgar. Paul was on his other side, like a smaller copy, both in the pose of mnemonic impressment; eyes closed hands pressed to foreheads, recording the proceedings for later analysis. Leto was at the opposite end of the table, slumped in his chair so only his forehead and bush of red hair showed above the polished surface. Ghanima sat at his left hand, next to Paul, spine straight and lips pursed in disapproval. Leto can be such a brat! My place was at his right with Aunt Irulan between me and the repellant Javid.

"Second, even third time pilgrims are becoming common," he was saying in his curiously antiquated accent, and I wondered idly what isolated pocket of the People had vomited him up. "The Qizarate suggests such piety be recognized by some small token, a Bakka scarf perhaps?."

Stilgar glared, outraged. The green gauze scarf of the Weeper was the distinguishing sign of Seitch Tabr.

Leto raised himself slightly, eyes and mouth appearing above the table edge. "Better we discourage such exercises in religious wanderlust!"

"My Lord!" the shock in Javid's usually oily voice was false but the distress genuine. "Would your Sacred Enlightenment deny the Faithful the right to seek Muad'Dib?"

"Is not Muad'Dib to be found everywhere?" I asked and was rewarded by a glare from Javid, quickly covered as he remembered who I was..

Leto straightened more, chin becoming visible. "Exactly right, Cousin! Our Father is everywhere. Let the Faithful find Him in their own hearts rather then indulge in these exercises in homelessness!"

"The Hajj is profitable to the priests," Ghani murmured with a sly, sidelong look down the table.

Stilgar snorted. "My grandnephew and foster son speaks aright," he said, underlining his privileged standing as kin to the Holy Family. "Dune does not need these water-fat, water wasting passage-birds!"

Javid, rendered speechless, threw an appealing look at Mother. She rapped her stylus on the table. "Enough!" she glared at Leto. "We did not create the Hajj nor is it within our power to end it."

"It is dangerous to meddle with popular passions," Irulan put in hesitantly. "Surely it is better that we be the focus of their aspirations?"

"Is it?" Leto wondered.

"I said enough!" Mother snapped, looked at Stilgar. "Is there anything else?"

Stil drew another folder from his pile, gingerly between finger and thumb, distaste twisting his mouth. "The Bene Gesserit wish to consult with the throne regarding the continuation of the Atreides bloodline."

Leto gave a sharp bark of laughter and slid back down in his seat. I shared an eye roll with Ghani. The Bene Gesserit never change, incorrigible in their futile efforts to control the uncontrollable.

Paul opened his eyes and lowered his hands, shifting from recorder to participant. "Surely the Sisterhood is a little early in its concern," he said, an adult dryness in his light child's voice.

"Between four and five standard years too early," I agreed as dryly.

"You may tell the Sisterhood we consider the union of the two branches of House Atreides politically expedient," said Mother.

"The very mating the Sisterhood desires," Irulan observed.

"Which is as good a reason as I can think of for looking elsewhere," said Leto straightening abruptly and adding to me, "No offense, Sweet Coz."

"None taken," I answered. "There is no lack of interesting alternatives; the Corrino Prince, little Elissa Fenring, Lirno son of Alir -" Stilgar looked at me startled by the name of his grandson. I smiled at him. "Fremen are good strong stock, culled by Shai-Hulud Himself. We could do worse then reinforce those genes."

"Breed back to norm," Paul murmured.

Ghani nodded agreement. "Our progeny would thank us for it."

"What norm?" asked Leto.

The stylus was trembling in Mother's hand, did she want an Atreides/Atreides cross so much? "I thought you content with the plans made." her voice held forced calm.

"We are not discontented," Leto assured her. "We but explore our options."

"Tell the Sisterhood the Atreides heirs mean to breed and are considering possible partners," Ghani suggested.

I chuckled. "That'll worry them!"

"A good thing," said Irulan, old resentments vibrato in her voice. Poor Irulan! she had the best of all reasons to hate the Sisterhood. She'd been shaped even before her conception as a tool for their use. Her love for her father had been the first crack in her conditioning and her love for Paul Atreides had shattered it but the Bene Gesserit had ruined both relationships. Knowing her a tool both father and husband had distrusted her, been reluctant to take all she would have given. The Sisterhood had robbed Irulan of love - and for that she would never forgive them.

"Love is antithetical to the Bene Gesserit Way," Ghani said gently, showing her thoughts had paralleled mine. "But Love is the only truly creative force therefore the Sisterhood remains forever sterile though they are blind to the fact."

"Don't be sentimental, niece," said Mother.

Ghani, Irulan and I all looked at her in shock. How could she say such a thing? Surely she too must know the truth of Love? A spasm of pain passed over Father's face and Leto's eyes narrowed. I realized with increased urgency that something was indeed very wrong with my mother.

The Ixian tube-car decanted the four of us and our inevitable train of priests into the guard room outside the Royal Creche. Fremen in the red djellebas of the Fedaykin Death Commandos lined the walls, hands on the hilts of their crysknives, green scarves marking them as Stilgar's own. We left the priests in an uncomfortable clump beside the tube and crossed the black and sand colored floor to the tunnel-like entrance to the Creche proper. The four meter thick plas-steel door screwed itself into place behind us sealing us off from the rest of the universe.

Our attendants, six desert worn Fremen crones sat in the anteroom. Every one was the widow or mother of a Fedaykin killed in personal defense of Muad'Dib and fiercely proud of her green mourning robes and the Atreides badge hanging around her neck. Shagarat and Hadeed sat together, sewing strips of green and black spice cloth into hangings. Azma busied herself brushing the whale fur cover of a sitting cushion. Sahsahra was grinding something in a small mortar, and Tawabil plucked the strings of a baliset to the irregular beat of Fakiha's desert drum. All six looked up briefly, saw we required no service and returned to their activities, a welcome change from the smothering sycophancy of the morning audience.

Leto led the way into the salon, shedding his golden robe at the threshold then stripping off orange vest and trousers to pad barefoot in nothing but his loincloth past the golden fountain bubbling on the terrace and down into the garden.

"Good idea," said Ghani. And she pulled her own gown over her head, untied the fastenings of her shift and stepped out of its filmy puddle as it dropped to the floor. Paul and I did not hesitate to follow suit. A splash announced Leto's entry into the pool at the bottom of the garden and stripped of our royal trappings we ran to join him.

The garden of the Royal Creche rose in green and flowering terraces from its central jewel a long pool, almost a lake, of clear water in a bed of pearl. A fountain at one end sent water arcing high in deliberate imitation of an original on distant Caladan. A summerhouse stood at the other end, a secretive green cave overgrown with sweet scented jasmine. Leto puffed and blew like a whale in the water, scattering floating lilies and ornamental fish. Ghani and Paul dived in after him. I preferred to sit on the edge kicking my feet and returning the others' splashes.

Ghani climbed out dripping and touched my arm. "Catch me if you can!" She darted off and I followed; up and down steps, dodging through a plantation of slender saplings, pushing through thickets of shrubs and trampling flowers underfoot. Ghani turned into the dappled shade of the long trellised walk. I pursued, closing the distance and catching the back of her loincloth just as we reached the terrace steps. We collapsed together in a giggling heap.

"And sometimes," said Aunt Irulan's voice above us, "they are children like other children."

We disentangled ourselves and looked up. Irulan stood at the top of the terrace steps still dressed in the black aba she'd worn at the audience. A wide belt of golden links cinched the full robe at the waist and an Atreides hawk wrought of fire gems glistened on her brow, suspended from a narrow filet. Beside her was a small man of indeterminate age.

White hair capped a round, unlined face open and innocent as a child's but the small dark eyes, keen and deep set, gave such ingenuousness the lie. It, like his foppish dress of short mauve robe and pink pleated shirt, was part of a carefully constructed facade. He stood close to Irulan, revealing an old intimacy. A lover perhaps? She had been past thirty when she married Uncle Paul. Never bred of course but not even the Bene Gesserit would have begrudged her a playmate or two.

"Who is this you've brought us, Irulan my sweet?" Paul asked as he and Leto came up the trellis path dripping. I saw the visitor start to sharp attention, recognizing the purely masculine confidence in Paul's voice, the undertones of sensual awareness incongruous with the childish flesh. "I warn you, sir," he added, "I am a jealous lover!"

Irulan laughed, but with an edge of uncertainty. Paul had been flirting with her since he was able to talk. At age five he had announced his intention to marry her when he was old enough. Neither Irulan nor anybody else knew how seriously to take that. Not even I. "This is Sil, Reeve Perrin," she said.

I recognized the name instantly. So this was the old Imperium's peripatetic poet-laureate! "You are very welcome," I told him eagerly, "I have read your books."

Leto snorted. "Is there a book in the Known Universe you haven't read, Sweet Coz?"

"I hope so," I shot back.

"Why do we stand here?" Ghani wondered. "Let us go up."

"Isa'af!" attend me! Leto shouted, leading the way into the airy salon decorated in shades of shell and sand.

The outer door opened and Fakiha looked in briefly then disappeared. It reopen a moment later admitting Hadeed, Tawabil, Azma and Shagarat bearing towels and clothing. Lips pursed in unspoken disapproval of the flagrant waste of moisture they toweled us briskly, replaced soaked loincloths with soft robes and wound wet hair with colored wraps. Within minutes we were dry and dressed and installed side by side upon a silk covered divan facing our guests. Fakiha came in carrying a coffee service; fat, fluted silver pot, small blue porcelain cups, a yellow bowl of fine ground coffee beans, glass flasks of melange and cardomon, all neatly arranged on a platinum tray which she placed on the low table in front of Irulan. It was Uncle Paul's coffee service, during his life it had been his Fremen mate, Chani, who'd made use of it - and worn his water rings. Only now, with her death and Uncle's did Irulan finally come into her rights as wife. Wife to a ghost.

I watched Sil, Reeve Perrin watch Irulan make the coffee, her movements deft and practiced as she measured the powdered bean and added carefully calculated amounts of spice and Spice. I saw the Corrino princess he remembered mirrored in his face. I too remembered her; the creamy complexion of the rounded oval face, the full lips with their arrogant pout, the long, heavy lidded green eyes. Dune and Muad'Dib had extinguished that Irulan. Today she was a wiry, water thin Fremen Sayyadina, tanned by the desert sun with hollowed cheeks and temples emphasizing the long blue-in-blue Eyes of the Ibad with their faint sandtracks at the corners. The sleek rolls and deceptively casual tendrils of a Kaitain court hairstyle did not become this new Irulan. She would have done better to leave her long blond hair in the ringed braids she usually wore and confronted her old friend with a wholly new self rather then this painful reminder of once was.

"So the great chronicler of the great finally deigns to visit Our court," Leto challenged lazily.

Sil tore his eyes away from Irulan. "Say rather he finally dares to do so," he answered lightly.

"Arrakis is not a safe place for disbelievers," Paul questioned/agreed.

"A seeker who is not yet sure of what he has found," Sil corrected. "A distinction perhaps too fine for your Qizarate to appreciate."

"Not Our Qizarate!" Ghanima said emphatically.

Irulan checked the coffee - not yet ready - and replaced the lid. "The religious bureaucracy is our Sardaukar, the base on which our rule rests."

"Did House Corrino never fear or resent their Sarduakar?" Leto asked her.

She smiled wryly. "All the time."

"The Qizarate worships power, not Muad'Dib," I said bleakly.

"They are not easily governed," Irulan agreed. She checked the coffee again and poured a cup, handing it to Fakiha, standing behind her, to pass to Sil. "But Alia keeps them well in hand."

That of course was part of the problem.

Fakiha brought coffee to Leto and Ghanima, Paul and me. Irulan poured the cup for the Fallen then filled one for herself.

"So how do you find Our city, Poet?" Leto asked Sil.

"Disturbing, Highness," he frowned into the cinnamon colored depths of his spice coffee. "I thought it fitting on my first morning in Arrakeen to go to the early service at the Temple."

We all winced. We knew the kind of crowds that gathered before Mother's Temple; the religious exhibitionists, the idle wanting to be entertained, Pilgrims seeking who knew what, sellers of relics and tarot packs, charlatans playing at soothsaying, food vendors shrieking their wares, mummers and acrobats, beggars and thieves. A mass of humanity both sacred and profane. But which was which? So we'd often asked ourselves. And so must Sil, with his artist's sensitivities, have wondered - but he denied it:

"I have seen carnivals of all kinds, the one held in your Temple square could not shock me." Carnival, a good word for it. "But there was an old man who did, one of your deep desert Fremen by the look of him. He silenced the cacophony with a single word - such control! He called the worshippers blasphemers and idolaters." Sil closed his eyes, his flexible voice changed, taking on a rough, commanding edge. "He said; 'The religion of Muad'Dib is not Muad'dib! He spurns it as he spurns you! Sand will cover this place! Sand with cover you!"

We stared at him, all four of us and Irulan too, wide eyed. Shivers coursed through my body. Who was this man who said what we, Muad'Dib's heirs, so often felt?

"I thought to see him torn apart before my eyes," Sil continued. "But the crowd parted tamely to let him and his guide pass."

"Guide?" Leto asked sharply.

Sil nodded. "A young boy who led him. The old man was blind, eye sockets scoured empty by I know not what."

"A stoneburner," Irulan whispered, hands white knuckled around her cup.

"Perhaps," Sil said, studying her reaction then turning to survey the four of us. "That thought occurred also to one in the crowd. He called the name of Muad'Dib and the old man stopped. He took a thing from within his robes, a desiccated fist the knuckle bones showing white. He called it the Hand of God and claimed to speak for the Hand of God. He named himself the Preacher."

There was silence as eye spoke to eye. Then Irulan said tightly. "Paul is dead. He must be dead. He went into the desert."

"The Hand of God," Leto murmured, "our father's hand?"

"There were many Fremen blinded by stoneburners during the Jihad," Paul said practically.

"But if it is Uncle Paul -" I did not finish the thought. Each of us did that for him or her self.


	4. Day Three

"It's no use talking about it, we don't know enough to say anything intelligent!" Ghani cried. The four of us were sitting on her bed within its tent of pale yellow curtains, all but Leto who was hanging half off it.

"Ghani's right," Paul agreed. "We need more data."

"First approximation says it cannot be Father," Leto observed, head dangling inches above the amber and red carpet.

"First approximation! We haven't sufficient data for even a tentative hypothesis!" Paul snapped. "You're a sloppy mentat, Leto."

"Mentat logic is a limited tool when applied to Messiahs," Leto answered. "I think it is Father."

"How could he have survived the desert?" I asked, curled small among the pillows at the head of Ghani's bed.

Leto shrugged and sat up. "Where did this Preacher come from, and where did he go?"

"The priests will find out," Paul said grimly.

"But if they don't?" asked Leto.

"Then we have a mystery," said Paul.

"We have too few mysteries," said Ghanima.

Our third day in Arrakeen was the day of the birthday durbar, a custom borrowed from the previous Imperial House. It began with a temple service preceded by the by now traditional argument with Mother.

"The spice trance is the central rite of our faith," she said as she always did. "I have played the oracle, your father was the oracle incarnate, you cannot avoid it!"

"We do not avoid, we delay," said Leto, feet firmly planted, immoveable.

"Our father was a full eighteen years old before he risked Water of Life," Ghanima reminded her.

"And I was six! younger then any of you," Mother cried in answer.

"Spice not only gives prescience but energizes the past lives," Ghani reminded her.

"We do not feel strong enough," said Leto.

"Strong enough!" Mother laughed. "You have made a game of the ancestral personas slipping them on and off like masks for your sport!"

"And that perhaps has been a mistake," said Leto.

"We must be more sure of ourselves," said Ghani.

The argument ended as it always did. The twins refused the proffered cup and gave the crowds of worshippers their father's words, regurgitated oracles as Leto called them. When the service ended we of the royal family left through the pru-door at the back following a winding passage to the great plaza of the Keep. The milling crowd of priests, courtiers and Fedaykin parted obediently to let us through to where three massive suspensor palanquins stood waiting on their stubby legs.

The first, platinum plated, emblazoned with Atreides hawks wrought in fire-jewels and flanked by Imperial lions, was for Leto and Ghanima. They climbed into the double seat, arranging their glittering white robes so the folds fell straight around them. They wore also matched emerald and diamond encrusted diadems, miniature replicas of the Imperial Crown of Muad'Dib.

A second Palanquin, plated in gold with sandworms twisting all over it, awaited Mother, dressed again in her high priestess regalia. The third palanquin, covered with silver plate and engraved with the sun and fish emblems of the Imperium, was for Paul and for me.

My parasilk gown was the deep cinnamon spice color, encrusted with gold, and a band studded with emeralds and pearls held back my hair. Paul wore the green Atreides dress uniform beneath a black and gold Fremen burnoose.

"Why does our mother not urge the Spice cup upon us?" my brother murmured in my ear as priests and attendants scurried around us.

"Because she is reluctant to risk the fruit of her own womb," I answered.

"It is that she cares less for Leto and Ghani, or that she thinks we are at greater risk then they?"

A good question. Mother loved the children of her only brother, of that there could be no doubt, but less perhaps then her own? Or could she have reason, based on her own experience, to believe the Spice trance a greater threat to her issue? My mind worried at the question, worked through the same paths of Bene Gesserit and Mentat reasoning that my brother's had already followed and reached the same conclusion: Abomination!

"Abomination," I whispered, chilled to my core. I looked at my brother and saw the same fear staring back. "No...no, not Mother!"

"She is changed," he said, mentat flat.

"No..." but it was a plea, not a denial. It could be. It could be. And if it were did it not mean all we pre-born were equally doomed? I had to run through the calming regimen twice before I could say with some asperity; "A fine time to raise such doubts in me!"

"There are no good times for such news," said my brother.

A dozen chosen Fedaykin hoisted our palanquin upwards. Ahead of us Ghani and Leto's thrones rose as smoothly to the shoulders of sixteen Fedaykin. Mother's smaller palanquin however was carried by eight of her priests. As the procession formed I spotted Sil, Reeve Perrin in the milling crowd and beckoned him to me.

"The Preacher did not appear?" I asked, leaning from my throne.

He shook his head, "No Princess."

"So at least we know that he is not reckless with his safety," Paul said dryly.

"He did not strike me as a man concerned with prudence, Highness," said Sil.

"He'd be mad to challenge us to our faces," said Paul.

"A holy madman," I said.

We paraded down the grand processional way, two hundred meters across and lined with double rows of date palms, A phalanx of chanting priests led the way, flanked by red robed Fedaykin and followed by rank upon rank of courtiers, officials and yet more priests. Mother followed them, surrounded by her Amazon guard, with Father walking at her side; then Paul and myself followed by our six attendants and finally Leto and Ghani flanked by Stilgar and Irulan.

I ordered Sil to walk beside me. Like all of us he was wearing one of the new hoodless and mask-less stillsuits beneath his finery. Ecological transformation or no only a fool exposed himself to the Arrakis' baking sun unprotected!

"I am sauteing in my own juices," he told me.

I laughed. "That is your water fat melting away."

"There may be nothing left of me!" he looked at the crowds beyond the files of red robed Fedaykin and green robed City Guards. "I see few desert Fremen."

"Our people do not like cities or ceremonies," I answered.

Our goal was the bled beyond the gap. We passed beneath the heavy lidded eyes of the half finished Face of Muad'Dib, carved into what was left of the old shield wall, onto the sun baked gold of the ancient desert. The reviewing stand had been erected atop a surviving outcropping, terraced and covered with spice fiber carpets patterned in hot orange and gold, curry reds, Atreides green and indigo blue. Paul and I settled ourselves with Ghani and Leto on the cushioned and canopied divan at the very top of the stand. Mother's seat was lower down, to the right, with Father beside her. Irulan took her place on our left with Sil respectfully installed on the steps below her.

Two hundred priests ranged themselves before the reviewing stand and began a ritual involving much chanting and burning of spice incense which served to kill time as the people poured out of the city behind us to fill the edges of the field. Ixian projector screens expanded into existence and looking around I saw reflections of myself, my sib and my cousins projected giant-sized a dozen times over.

"This is our people's one chance a year to get a good look at us," Leto commented dryly to Sil.

"It is not the practice of royalty to expose themselves to the common throng," the poet agreed.

"Not in this age," I said. "It used to be different."

"Times change," said Leto.

"As no one knows better then us," his twin agreed.

"Tell me, Sil," said Paul, "why have you never graced an Atreides court with your presence before now?"

The poet smiled ruefully. "How I wish now that I had, my prince! But I have no gift of prescience. Caladan was too peaceful and well governed under your grandsire to attract my attention. I frequented less tranquil worlds where things seemed to be happening."

"Such as the Harkonnen court," said Leto.

He nodded. "I took my life in my hands with those two visits, but they surely were not uneventful!"

"Poor Gunseng," I mourned, murdered by his own son at his own table. He had been one of the very, very few decent Harkonnens - and father to the worst of them.

"'Nothing short of a stoneburner would improve House Harkonnen,'" my brother quoted from the second volume of Sil's memoirs.

"An interesting remark," said Leto. "You believe in genetic predestination, Sil."

"I did when I wrote those words," the poet answered seriously. "I believed it when I watched Vladimir revert to Harkonnen type after his father's murder. But I have seen much since and these days I believe in the soul and its freedom to choose."

"Then you believe as our father did," said Ghani.

"Perhaps I have become a follower of Muad'Dib without realizing it," he said, and continued; "Vladimir Harkonnen certainly had a choice, his father nurtured all that was good in him. He could have chosen to be another Gunseng, instead he followed Granuk."

"Sarfa," I said softly, "he turned away from God, as we Fremen would say."

"A good way of putting it," Sil agreed grimly. 'Poor Gunseng indeed. To lose his life was a small loss compared with the failure of all his hopes."

"At least he did not live to see it," said Ghani

"A mercy," Sil agreed.

But Gunseng was our great-grandfather, I did not say. Our Harkonnen blood was still a deep, dark secret known only to the Family - and the Bene Gesserit. Were we Gunseng's ultimate vindication or yet another shame for the Great Houses to bear? Was it indeed for us to chose or had the choice already been made by God, or destiny, or genes?

Trumpets sounded, the parade of tribute was about to begin.


	5. The Preacher

The durbar wound its inevitable way from entertainment to satiety to boredom as the parade of tribute went on, and on and on. I read Uncle Paul's filament OC Bible which fit discreetly into the palm of my hand. Leto and Paul continued their perennial game of pyramid chess using their mnemonist abilities to visualize a board that had no physical existence, and Ghanima was either meditating or dozing. To my left I could hear Irulan and Sil's low pitched voices rising and falling in rhythmic conversation, and then I heard Irulan gasp.

I looked up. A score or so of children were performing an intricate dance before the reviewing stand involving much spinning and swirling of colored streamers. Only not all were children, there were Face Dancers among them!

"The fools," Leto said quietly from behind me. "Did they think we would not see?"

"A strangely blatant attempt," his twin agreed softly.

Our mother's voice floated from beyond them, grim in tone. "Not all our enemies are wise enough to be subtle."

I consulted my eidetic memory to learn which world was presenting this deceptive show. "The Harkonnen influence just might make the government on Giedi Prime this clumsy and obvious," I murmured.

"Or the Bene Tleilaxu might be making use of them as a shield for some attempt of their own," said Paul.

'They wouldn't be obvious," Ghani pointed out, quite inarguably.

"We'll learn who is behind this, soon enough," Mother promised.

The children gave way to yet another pageant. Troubled, I turned the micron thick pages of the little bible to a familiar passage: 'Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess?' I was being deaf, we all were. We were missing something obvious, something simple - perhaps too simple for our tortuous, preborn, memory stuffed minds to grasp.

The Parade of Tribute ground on as inexorable and inescapable as the preset future of Muad'Dib's vision. Leto and Paul finished their game of Cheops. I passed Uncle Paul's bible to Ghanima and joined the boys in a riddle-play conducted entirely in our secret languages. The time passed slowly. Paul gave up his place to Ghani in return for the tiny bible. I yawned and considered a nap.

Suddenly Leto broke off mid-riddle-response. "I can't stand any more of this nonsense, let's go!"

Mother straightened abruptly, turning her back on the colloquy of priest-treasurers she'd been consulting sotto-voce. "Impossible!" she snapped.

"Impossible?" Leto echoed, mockery vibrato in his precisely controlled Voice. "Nothing is impossible to the Kwisatch Haderach!"

"_A_ Kwisatch Haderach," my own brother corrected crisply, for that was a title both boys, and Ghani and I as well, could claim.

Leto laughed. Mother, bristling, opened her mouth to respond and was forestalled by Irulan, leaning forward to catch her eye. "It's already been a long day for them, Alia. And there's still the reception of the Ambassadors tonight."

"I'm tired," I agreed quickly.

"And I'm bored," said Leto, "which is an exceptionally exhausting state of being."

"Perhaps it would be wise to allow the children some rest," Father suggested, his tonalities conveying to mother a reminder of just how difficult Leto could become when frustrated.

…..

Our departure was considerably more discrete than our arrival, the four of us tucked into a suspensor-car beneath a polarized dome, we could see out but none of the weary, sun worn people trekking back to the city could see us. The car moved at little more than a walking pace, maneuvering between the crowds of citizens seeking their homes, pilgrims their hotels and delegates the comforts of the palace's vast guest quarters. As we approached Mother's temple we found ourselves circling the fringes of a crowd that did not move, stone still and staring as if mesmerized at a tall hooded figure high on the temple steps, the shorter figure of a boy at his side.

I caught my breath and beside me Leto leaned forward to bark a sharp order into the ear of our driver. "Stop and let us out!" the man obeyed the Holy Heir, indeed Leto's voice gave him no choice. The car halted and lowered gently to the ground as Ghani pulled out and distributed the dun colored, jubba-cloaks from the vehicle's fremkit. Swathed, our finery well covered, we emerged one by one to insinuate ourselves into the crowd. I worked my way slowly forward on Leto's heels, Ghani and Paul following close behind, we were not noticed, less because of our flimsy disguise then the crowd's fascination with the Preacher's words.

"- all men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax," he thundered, Voice sending shivers down my spine. Mentally I completed the text with him. "The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known!"

Muad'Dib's teachings held that resonance for me. His words gave form and substance to knowledge I had not known that I had until I read them. Surely, surely I was not the only one he touched so? The inspiration he'd given to the Tribes had been genuine hadn't it? And yet - and yet I could not deny that somewhere along the way something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. Muad'Dib had taught freedom not oppression, the spiritual unity of tau not the enforced conformity of a theocracy that crushed all souls into a single mold. The Preacher spoke aright, the religion of Muad'Dib was NOT Muad'Dib! It used his name and his heirs to justify their domination.

I was roused from such thoughts by bumping into Leto's suddenly stationary back and

saw that we had arrived at the foot of the first flight of steps. Ghani and Paul crowded in behind and the four of us huddled, staring upward, drinking in words that echoed our own thoughts – and fears. Words that seemed directed specifically at us.

"This is the fallacy of power: ultimately it is effective only in an absolute, limited universe."

"Isn't that exactly what we have?" Leto muttered, to himself rather than me. And the Preacher answered:

"But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power. Paul Muad'Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of Arrakeen. His descendants have yet to learn the lesson for themselves.

"Who will be their teacher? The priests of the great hoax called the Church of Muad'Dib with their rules and rote? The Holy Regent Alia?" Blood burned in my cheeks, such scorching scorn! How dared this ragged ulemma criticize my mother? Yet, were he Muad'Dib, who had better right?

'_Mother controls the Church,'_ the thought held exquisite pain but could not be denied, had I not seen with my own eyes, how she swathed herself in the symbols of hieratic power? But Uncle Paul had created the Qizarate! How could he have failed to See what it would become? Our messiah had proved himself mortal, had he also been fallible?

I looked at my brother. I could see from his stance and the position of his right arm that his hand was clenched on the hilt of his crysknife but he held himself in check.

"I preach to the Fremen!" the Preacher declaimed. "The Fremen must return to his original faith, to his genius in forming human communities; he must return to the past where that lesson of survival was learned in the struggle with Arrakis."

Was this so? Then we were lost for return to the past is one of the few things that are truly impossible. If recreating the World of the Fathers was the only way for the Fremen to remain Fremen then we had destroyed our people by fulfilling their dearest dream.

"The only business of the Fremen should be that of opening his soul to the inner teachings," the Preacher thundered. "The worlds of the Imperium, the Landsraad and the CHOAM Confederacy have no message to give him. They will only rob him of his soul."

'_Disengage' _the thought arose my mind whole and complete in itself as if fully formulated in some unknown depth of mind before bursting into full consciousness. We must disengage ourselves and our people. We must not, and they must not, become cogs in the machine of empire.

'Humans must never submit to machines' was the first teaching. Oh but machines need not be made of wires and circuits. They could be created out of systems and ideals as well! Had the Bulterian Jihad succeeded only in replacing machines made of metal with machines made of dehumanized men?

Revelation beat upon my ego like a sandstorm upon a stilltent's fabric. We had made men machines! What was a mentat but a human computing machine? a Bene Gesserit but a reproductive machine? a Kwisatch Haderach but a machine for harnessing and controlling the very powers of the universe?

Revelation crystalized into words; 'Love of power is the root of all evil.'

The Preacher spoke on, my mentat trained eidetic memory automatically recording his words even as my sentiency reeled. "I will not argue with the Fremen claims that they are divinely inspired to transmit a religious revelation. It is their concurrent claim to ideological revelation which inspires me to shower them with derision. Of course they make that dual claim in the hope that it will strengthen their mandarinate and help them to endure in a universe which finds them increasingly oppressive. It is in the name of all those oppressed people that I warn the Fremen: short-term expediency always fails in the long term."

…

"Expediency has become our only guide. The government of the Qizarate has neither logic nor morality to recommend it." Each of us had taken a different thought away from our encounter with the Preacher. That was Paul's.

"Muad'Dib was protector of the oppressed. Now his Church oppresses the universe in his name and ours." Ghanima brooded.

We sat in council. The four of us concealed by leaves and branches in a secret bower hollowed out of a dense shrubbery tucked into a corner of the second terrace of our creche's garden. The scent of jasmine and the crushed thyme on which we sat was thick around us. I picked up a broken stalk and twirled it between my fingers. Thyme. Time. Time was our enemy as the machine gathered momentum to crush us. Disengage!

Neither Paul nor Ghani seemed to have shared my revelation. Had Leto? I looked across the green twilight at my cousin. "Have you seen the Preacher?"

"I have seen the Sandworm," he answered, expression unreadable – even to me.

Ghani and Paul looked back and forth between us as the riddle exchange continued.

"What about the Sandworm?" I challenged.

"It gives us the air we breathe," he responded.

"Then why do we destroy its land?"

"Because Shai-Hulud, the Sandworm deified, orders it."

"You would ride the Sandworm, cousin?" I asked, deeply disturbed.

"It is that or be crushed beneath him."

I spoke directly. "What have you seen, Leto?"

"The vision Muad'Dib denied," he answered. "I have seen the Golden Path."


End file.
